...the rest of the EU wants Britain to stay but many are getting fed up with Cameron’s antics and coming round to the view, as Angela Merkel’s recent comments showed, that perhaps arguing for Britain to remain as a member is becoming more trouble than its worth,,,

Former Minister Denies Torture Report Lobbying

David Cameron's spokesman admits Britain asked for redactions - but a former minister denies involvement.

The former Home Office security minister Lord West - in an interview with Sky News - has categorically denied lobbying a US intelligence committee to edit its report on CIA torture.

It comes after Britain was dragged deeper into a row over US torture allegations after the Government admitted it asked for changes in a Senate report on the CIA's behaviour.

Details of 24 meetings since 2009 between UK politicians and diplomats and members of the committee were released following a Freedom of Information Act request.

Home Secretary Theresa May, Labour former minister Lord West and the UK's ambassador to Washington were all said to have held meetings with the US politicians while they were working on their inquiry.

Lord West - the security minister in the last Labour Government - acknowledged his talks with the Senate committee, but told Sky News that it was regarding a different matter - cyber security.

And Mrs May's name was later removed from the list after the Foreign Office said it had made a "clerical error" in including her as she had been due to meet some of the committee in July 2011 but her visit had been delayed until September and she had not rescheduled the talks.

In an abrupt U-turn by No 10 on Friday, officials admitted changes had been asked for, 24 hours after denying Britain had asked for passages to be removed.

At Thursday's No 10 briefing, David Cameron's deputy spokeswoman confirmed British intelligence agencies discussed redactions with their US counterparts.

"My understanding is no redactions were sought to remove any suggestion that there was UK involvement in any alleged torture or rendition," she said.

And then she admitted: "There was a conversation with the agencies and their US counterparts on the executive summary.

"Any redactions sought there were done on national security grounds in a way we would have done with any other report."

And yet on Wednesday, the day the CIA report was published, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman, when asked what redactions had been sought, repeatedly said: "None whatsoever, to my knowledge."

The admission comes after the head of the CIA John Brennan described the techniques used to extract information as "abhorrent".

The Senate report had detailed the US intelligence agency's "brutal" treatment of al Qaeda suspects in a network of secret prisons around the world.,,,http://news.sky.com/story/1390474/former-minister-denies-torture-report-lobbying

In northern Bucharest, in a busy residential neighbourhood minutes from the heart of the capital city, is a secret the Romanian government has long tried to protect.

For years, the CIA used a government building — codenamed "Bright Light" — as a makeshift prison for its most valuable detainees. There it held al-Qa'ida operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, and others in a basement prison before they were ultimately transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006, according to former US intelligence officials familiar with the location and inner workings of the prison.

The existence of a CIA prison in Romania has been widely reported, but its location has never been made public. The Associated Press and German public television ARD located the former prison and learned details of the facility where harsh interrogation tactics were used. ARD's programme on the CIA prison is set to air today.

Zbigniew Siemiatjowski may yet end up with the dubious honour of being the only person in the world to face legal proceedings over the torture programme carried out by America's Central Intelligence Agency—and he is not even American. The former head of Polish intelligence was at the helm of his country's spy agency when the Americans asked for, and received, permission to hold prisoners on Polish soil in 2002. That has made him the target of a slow-moving, top secret Polish investigation, now in its seventh year. The newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported two years ago that he was being charged with violating Polish and international law in allowing the CIA to interrogate prisoners at a secret facility in Stare Kiejkuty, a town in northern Poland.

Just what went on in the villa there during 2002 and 2003 was revealed in graphic detail by the report on CIA torture released by the American Senate on Tuesday. Although the report had country names redacted, the phrase “Detention Site Blue” correlates with Stare Kiejkuty, where five prisoners were held. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of being one of the planners of the September 11th attacks, was waterboarded as soon as he got to the site. The treatment was so brutal that a medical officer noted: “We are basically doing a series of near drownings”. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi suspected of being behind the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, was kept in a “stress position” with his hands above his head for more than two days, threatened with a mock execution and a power drill and told his mother would be raped.

The Poles apparently had doubts when the Americans asked to expand the facility from two to five prisoners, and had to be cajoled with a dollop of money. The Washington Post reported earlier this year that the Polish intelligence agency received $15m in cash. The Stare Kiejkuty facility was closed in late 2003, after Aleksander Kwasniewski, then Poland's president, told his American counterpart George Bush that he had become “uneasy” about what was going on there.

When the Americans turned to the Poles for help after the 2001 attacks, Poland was a very different place than it is today. The country was much less self-confident. It had only joined NATO in 1999, and the governing Democratic Left Alliance, largely composed of former communists, was keen to stress its bona fides as a solid western ally. “We had concerns, but they did not include that the Americans would break the law in a knowing and uncontrolled way,” Mr Kwasniewski said in a radio interview this week.

Poland remains one of the most pro-American countries in Europe. The annual Transatlantic Trends poll finds that 78% of Poles have a positive opinion of the US, higher than the European average. Despite Poland's painful memories of the torture its own secret police meted out under communism, there has been little public outrage over the American revelations. Nonetheless, the CIA mess has exacted a political cost. Ewa Kopacz, Poland's prime minister, insisted that Polish-US ties remained strong after chatting with President Barack Obama just before the report's release. But Mr Kwasniewski was more cutting, saying Poland should have “limited trust” in dealing with America.

To some extent, Poland has no choice but to follow up on reports of CIA crimes. Earlier this year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Poland had violated the European Convention on Human Rights by allowing prisoners to be maltreated on its territory. It ordered Warsaw to pay two prisoners €230,000 in damages. The Senate report may prompt Poland to speed up its lethargic investigation into Mr Siematkiowski, an ironic situation given that the Americans who carried out the torture have yet to face any charges. But there has been no progress reported in that case in the last two years. And for all the tension, Poland's anxiety over Russian aggression in Ukraine leaves it more reliant than ever on its close security relationship with America. Poles may not be happy that the CIA used their country as a torturing ground, but with an expansionist Russia in their neighbourhood, they are reluctant to press the issue too hard.

Swiss intelligence services are allegedly in possession of proof that the US has detained terror suspects in secret prisons in various European countries. The CIA is irritated.

A fax sent by the Egyptian foreign ministry to its embassy in London stated that more than 20 Iraqis and Afghans had been questioned at a US-run base in Romania, a Swiss newspaper reported on Sunday.

SonntagsBlick said the Swiss secret services obtained a copy of the fax which revealed that the Egyptian embassy in London "learned from its own sources that 23 Iraqi and Afghan citizens had been questioned at the Mikhail Kogalniceanu base in the town of Constanza on the Black Sea coast."

The newspaper quoted a report written by the Swiss fefense ministry which said Egypt believed there were "similar centers in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria."

The Swiss ministry reacted to the report with a statement saying it would open an investigation into how the information was leaked. However, because the report is meant to be secret, the ministry refused to comment on its contents.

Categorical denials

A senior officer at the Mikhail Kogalniceanu base categorically denied the report on Sunday.

"I have been working at this base since 1995 and I have never been aware of such an operation," officer Dan Buciuman said.

He added that the base was open to "anyone who wants to carry out an investigation."

Amid protests from European governments that their airports are being used by the Central Intelligence Agency to transport suspects, the United States has not denied the existence of alleged prisons in eastern and central Europe and elsewhere, but has refuted allegations that it uses torture to obtain information.

Just in time

US television network ABC reported in December that the US had held 11 senior members of the al Qaeda network in Poland but that they were evacuated to North Africa shortly before US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice toured Europe that month.

During a stop in Bucharest, Rice signed an agreement with Romania to establish permanent US military bases in the country, the first ever in a former Warsaw Pact state.

The new US military presence will have its headquarters at Mikhail Kogalniceanu.

(18Oct2013)The deal about the use of Romania's Mihail Kogalniceanu air base was agreed during the talks between US Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel and Romanian Defence Minister Mircea Dusa.

In a statement, Pentagon spokesman George Little said Mr Hagel "praised this agreement, which is particularly important as the US prepares to wind down transit centre operations at Manas".

"Secretary Hagel highlighted this agreement as a further testament to Romania's steadfast commitment to the Isaf (International Security Assistance Force) mission and its commitment to regional and international security."

However, the details of the deal were not released. The base is near the Black Sea town of Constanta.

In June, Kyrgyzstan's parliament voted to end the US lease on Manas in July 2014. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24590082

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Even so, the US has established forward operating bases in Romania which are extensive and growing . .

“The US is expected to take over the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base, near Constanta, later this year, though no exact date has been announced.

“US troops are also allowed to use three training ranges in southeast and central Romania.

“The Romanian parliament has overwhelmingly approved an agreement to let the US station up to 3,000 troops in the formerly communist country.

“Members of parliament voted 257-1 in favor of the proposal, with 29 nationalists abstaining, to pass the 10-year agreement, on Wednesday.

“Under the deal, US troops will be able to use four Romanian military bases in the eastern European nation.” (Romanian Congress Approves US Bases, Al Jazeera, English, May 2, 2007)

“The treaty signed by Romania and the US on facilities to be used by American troops was ratified recently, the Bucharest Daily News reported. Three instruction shooting ranges and an air base are to be used by the US Army in Romania, but the military facilities are still to be administered by the Romanian authorities, as their legal owner, according to the agreement treaty on the military bases signed by Romania and the US on December 6. The document indicates four military facilities: Smardan, Babadag, Mihail Kogalniceanu, and Cincu which are to be used by NATO forces or NATO partners only after the Romanian authorities approve the operations. On judicial provisions, the agreement states that Romanian laws must be taken into account, but allows the US forces to initiate various actions like construction works and changes to the surroundings. The military facilities allow the US troops to initiate training programs for artillery, infantry, and air bombing exercises. The Smardan military facility is the largest, with a surface area of about 8,500 hectares. It can accommodate over 600 soldiers. The Babadag camp has 2,700 hectares and can host about 250 soldiers. The Mihail Kogalniceanu aerodrome has a length of 3,500 meters and will be used for air exercises, while the Cincu shooting range will mainly be used for the training of infantry.” (AXIS Information and Analysis – 06.01.2006)

And, don’t think the Romanians aren’t excited about the American presence!

“On the eve of Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Romania, the foreign minister of that country was in a state of great emotion, almost in tears, as he emphasized the global and historical significance of the visit in lyrical terms: ‘That which our grandparents and parents have been waiting for 60 years, and which hundreds of prisoners hoped for back in the time of communism, is now happening: the Americans are coming!’ (Andrej Grubacic, The Americans Are Coming! Democracy As Cooperation Between Secret Services – ZNET, December 16, 2005)

This entire strategic military equation will be enhanced with the US moving into Moldova—next to Romania—and ultimately into the Ukraine itself!

The Hollywood studio that made the James Bond and Spider-Man films has abandoned shoots after hackers crippled its computer network, and leaked four films and thousands of documents.

Agencies filming for Sony Pictures have cancelled shoots because the problems have left it unable to process payments, a source told The Times.

The attack by Guardians of Peace, a hacking collective suspected of having links with North Korea, has taken most of Sony Pictures’ computers offline. -----------

Sony Pictures has launched a digital counterattack against hackers who stole thousands of internal documents and posted them online.

The film studio is attempting to bring down websites that are hosting files stolen three weeks ago by a collective calling itself Guardians of Peace. The group stole thousands of gigabytes of information and crippled the company’s computer network, much of which has not yet been restored.

(12Dec)The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has released new information claiming the Bush administration misled the American people in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said on Thursday that a 2003 CIA cable warns the administration of former President George W. Bush against making reference to claims that Mohammad Atta – the leader of the 9/11 hijackers – had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech Republic before the attacks.

Levin, who is retiring, maintains that Bush officials used the unconfirmed meeting to link Iraq to 9/11 and Al-Qaeda in order to justify the US invasion in Iraq.

"There was a concerted campaign on the part of the Bush administration to connect Iraq in the public mind with the horror of the Sept. 11 attacks. That campaign succeeded," said Levin, who cited opinion polls from that time showing that many Americans believed former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks. "Of course, connections between Saddam and 9/11 or Al-Qaida were fiction."

Levin has called for the full declassification of the Prague CIA cable and has repeatedly called on the directors of the CIA to make it public. Levin said the war in Iraq was the most significant event in his 36 years as a United States senator, and the cable is an important historical record showcasing why the US went to war in Iraq in 2003.

On Thursday, he read into the Congressional Record a letter he received from CIA Director John Brennan on March 13, 2014, declassifying for the first time a statement from the cable.

“[T]here is not one USG [counterterrorism] or FBI expert that...has said they have evidence or ‘know’ that [Atta] was in indeed [in Prague]. In fact the analysis has been quite the opposite.”

In his speech, Levin referred to an appearance by Vice President Dick Cheney on 'Meet the Press' on December 9, 2001, where Cheney said: "It's been pretty well confirmed that he (Atta) did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack."

Levin said that, far from “pretty well confirmed,” there was almost no evidence that such a meeting took place, or records to indicate that it had. He said, in fact, that Atta was almost certainly in the United States at the time of the purported meeting in Prague.

“Mr. President, those statements were simple not true. We did know. We did know there was no evidence that such a meeting had taken place,” he said. “The Vice President (Dick Cheney) recklessly disregarded the truth, and he did so in a way calculated to maintain support for the administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq.”

Levin said he is bringing up the CIA cable from a decade ago because it is about giving the American people a full account of the march to war as new information becomes available. He said it is about trying to hold leaders who misled the public accountable, and about warning future leaders that they must not commit sons and daughters to battle on the basis of false statements.

Levin said that at the time, the Bush administration campaign was successful in convincing more than half of Americans that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the attacks. He added that in a poll taken six months after the invasion of Iraq, 70 percent of Americans believed it was likely that Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 attacks.

Levin also referred to a memoir published by the former head of the Czech Republic's counterintelligence, Jiri Ruzek, who wrote: “It is becoming more and more clear that we had not met expectations and not provide the ‘right’ intelligence output...The Americans showed me that anything can be violated, including the rules they themselves taught us.”

Levin said that Director Brennan’s apparent refusal to declassify the cable or ask the Czech government if it objects to the release of the cable “takes on the character of continuing cover-up.”,,,

Four Spanish government ministries were hit by serious cyberattacks in 2014, with the assaults targeting the mobile phones and personal computers of prominent government figures.

The Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of the Presidency suffered the most serious hacking attempts, known as advanced persistent threats (APTs), according to Spanish newspaper El País.

Lindsay Lohan has been spending a lot of time in the U.K., and apparently she's loving it!

The actress recently did an interview with The Guardian, where the said a lot about her dislike of Los Angeles, and why life in London is worlds better for her!

"In LA I didn't know what to do apart from go out every night. That's when my friends were free. And I would go out and there would be all these cameras there and that's when it became difficult… I can go for a run here on my own. I do every morning, early, and I think how my friends in New York would still be up partying at that time. I needed to grow up and London is a better place for me to do that than anywhere else… I won't live in LA again, hell no. My friends tell me shit when they come over I don't want to hear. I don't even know who got married and who got pregnant. You turn on the news in LA and it is all gossip about people. All the stuff that is going on in the world right now and this gossip is the news? I love the BBC. I haven't heard myself mentioned on TV since I have been here. That has been really weird for me, and great."

There were no questions and no cameras allowed at the packed Hollywood premiere of The Interview on Thursday night. The film, financed by the $8bn tinseltown powerhouse Sony Pictures, features Seth Rogen and James Franco as celebrity reporters tasked by the CIA with assassinating North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The movie had already been declared “an act of war” by regime officials in June but that turned out to be only the beginning of Sony Picture’s problems; the studio’s internal debate about how to edit the movie was revealed in one of many corporate emails hacked and leaked on the internet in one of the largest releases of confidential data in recent history.,,,http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/12/the-interview-sony-data-hack

,,,once upon a time,,,

Why does Obama come up with such quick judgments on news events and make them public? Whether it’s the downing of MH17, the use of chemical weapons in Syria, the death of Michael Brown, or the hacking of Sony, Obama hastily tells everyone what happened even though he cannot possibly know what has happened. Why does he do this?

In each case, he clearly has an agenda that he wishes to promote. He has ulterior motives. He wants to use the events to advance his political agenda. Whenever he does this, he can be proven wrong — later on. But since he has spoken out early and loudly and since he gets instant and wide publicity, his version becomes the predominant version. Even if it doesn’t predominate, he has managed the news to his own satisfaction. He has altered the attitudes or perceptions of a certain segment of the population, and this has advanced his agenda. He has advanced the reality he’s after, and he has made it come true. His position is so powerful that, with some care and skill, he creates “truth” and reality. What he says about events may later be shown to be false. He’s willing to take that risk and live with it in order to advance his agenda, which is the “truth” or reality he’s after. There’s usually enough uncertainty surrounding events that he can make a plausible-sounding case for his version. The public is not interested in knowing the truth or meaning of many events anyway, and their attention is onto the next story.

There is the truth obtained by careful consideration of causes and effects. This truth is one of understanding and knowledge. This is not what Obama or any politician is after. Their idea of truth is what is real, or what occurs, or what is material reality. The politicians think in terms of objects and what is or is not, as experienced in objects. People to them are objects for manipulation. The free mind and personality are not valued by those who have this will to dominance. They manipulate, as masters to slaves. Their manipulation of the minds of the people who live under their rule is surely of no less importance, and perhaps of greater importance, than all the material aggressions of the state. If people do not mind those material inroads and think of them as not aggressions, they will think themselves free when actually their minds and thoughts have been conditioned and heavily influenced and controlled. The problem here is that, with enough conditioning, slaves can think themselves free.